ABC Election Coverage: The Poll Vault: New South Wales 2007

Claws out over election costings

Claws out over election costings

By Katie Cassidy

As predicted by Matt Wade over at The SMH, the state election campaign will this week focus on the cost of election promises - and so it started today after the release of the Government's election costings by Treasury.

Treasury totalled Labor's election promises to cost $1.6 billion (as was revealed by The Australian and mentioned here), with Premier Morris Iemma using the announcement to attack the Opposition's promises - which weren't submitted to Treasury.

Peter Debnam has said much of the funding needed for their election promises would be raised by the "natural attrition of Sydney bureaucrats" - some 20,000 jobs need to go to save $4.5 billion over four years.

But Mr Iemma today said it would have to be more like 40,000 sackings to get the saving required to pay for all the Coalition's promises.